beitou hot spring

Hello Everyone,
in our blog entry today, we will be covering the Beitou Hot Spring and Golden Spring Hotel in Taipei, Taiwan.

Last year, Baby and I wanted to go to Beitou Hot Spring but as the weather was rather unfavourable, we had to give it a miss. This time round, lady luck was smiling on us and we really thank God for giving us a really perfect weather and timing to go to Beitou Hot Spring and rejuvenate ourselves.

After arriving in Taipei High Speed Rail Station, Baby and I lugged our heavy baggage to take the Taipei MRT to XinBeiTou Station. The journey from Taipei Main Station to XinBeiTou Station took about 27 minutes and it was extremely fast!

During the train ride to XinBeiTou Station, we noticed that most of the residential houses were constructed rather near the MRT tracks. In fact, you could see what the people are doing in their houses from the train. Hence, it really makes us wonder how the people could stand the noise coming from the train.

When we stepped out of the train at XinBeiTou Station, we can literally smell that the air has changed somewhat. In fact, the atmosphere smelt quite pungent and it could be due to the sulphur content in the hot spring.

As we had lots of heavy baggage, the most urgent and most important thing we had to do was to check into our hotel and unload our heavy baggage before we could even think about exploring the area. So, we checked into our accommodation for the night, the Golden Spring Hotel.

All of the rooms are equipped with the Hot Spring Facility and this plaque basically serves to inform guests that the hotel has been certified by the relevant agencies. It even tells you what is the type of spring water, the contents of the spring water, and the temperature of the spring water.

Again, there is a see-through glass panel and to be honest, I personally feel that the see-through glass panel was constructed out of safety reasons. You can choose to shower standing or soak in the bath. The bath has three types of knobs; one for the normal hot water, one for the normal cold water, and one for the hot spring water.

Before I continue on with the rest of the blog entry, do allow me to share some tips with you when you are planning to soak yourself in the hot spring water.

1). When you are soaking yourself in the hot spring water, remember to shut the bathroom door tight; if not, the strong smell of sulphur will seep into your room, causing you to have a rather uncomfortable sleep at night.

2). Do not soak your body in the hot spring water for more than 30 minutes.

3). When planning to soak in the hot spring water, don’t plunge your body into the water at one go; start by entering the water with your feet, then to your legs, and followed by your waist. This is to allow your body to slowly acclimatise to the temperature of the hot spring water.

4). Never ever soak into the water near where your heart is.

5). It is perfectly normal to feel your heart beating fast. However, if you start feeling giddy/nauseous, get out of the hot spring water immediately. If you don’t, you might become unconscious and the consequences can be worse.

6). Do not soak in the hot spring water immediately after a meal.

Now that you more or less know the dos and don’ts of soaking in the hot spring water, allow me to continue with the rest of the blog post.

Well, since it was already evening when we more or less settled down, we went around to explore the area and we were quite lucky that we actually caught a wedding photoshoot in progress. And so, Baby went around shooting photographs of the beautiful couple.

Anyways, for the first 3 days of our trip, we did not have a portable data connection. Hence, when we reached XinBeiTou, we were seeking high and low for a mobile shop that sells prepaid mobile data connection. A lot of friends recommended us to get the Taiwan Da Ge Da prepaid mobile data connection as it was considered quite value-for-money. For 5 days worth of mobile data, it cost only $600 TWD [approx. $25.50 SGD].

Hello Everyone,
we truly apologise for not blogging over the last few days as we are currently in Taiwan for a holiday and we will only be back this Sunday evening.

As we just managed to get a stable wifi network, we are going to put up a rather short blog entry about our Taiwan trip thus far.

Background of Our Trip:

Baby and I have planned for this trip to Taiwan since a year ago and ever since our first trip to Taiwan together, we have made it a point to visit Taiwan every year.

For this year’s trip, it would be for 9 days 8 nights and we will be staying at 5 different properties. So far in our trip, we have put up at Ming Qin Min Su, Skylight BB and the Golden Spring Hotel. For the rest of our trip [that is tomorrow and the remaining days], we will be staying at Shui Wu and Vogue Star Serviced Apartment.

For this year’s trip, Baby and I are using two types of cameras to take photographs of our trip. One is the Canon Powershot S100 which I am personally using and the other is the Olympus EPL-3 which Baby is using. Because we take tons of photographs [up to more than 2 GB per day] everyday, we will put up two different links [one which has access to the photos that I take with the Canon Powershot S100 and the other which has access to the photos that Baby takes with the Olympus EPL-3]. Due to the huge volume of photographs taken each day, we will not carry out any image editing until we are back in Singapore. So meanwhile, all the photos that you see in the upcoming blog entries about our trip are all unedited.

+For a start, here are two links to the photographs that we have taken duing our first day in Taiwan this year.+

Melvin’s Perspective of Day 1 in Taiwan 2012 Using the Canon Powershot S100

About The Founder

A jack of all trades, Melvin was a waiter, coffee barista, hotelier, and is now a digital marketer specialising in Search Engine Optimisation and Content Writing. His hobbies include wine-tasting, boating, reading and travelling.